


The Pathology of Guilt

by SomethingProfound



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Gen, Getting Back Together, Or trying to, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 17:32:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19381444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomethingProfound/pseuds/SomethingProfound
Summary: Shepard and Ashley begin to reconnect as the war rages and the colonies fall, one by one.





	The Pathology of Guilt

_ Here’s _

_ the room with everyone in it. _

_ Your dead friends passing _

_ through you like wind _

_ through a wind chime. _

_ -Ocean Vuong _

 

Ashley couldn’t sleep. The ship was familiar, but not- close to home yet different enough to be unsettling. By all rights she should’ve been more comfortable. The first  _ Normandy  _ she’d hotbunked with the other Marines, with Eden Prime still playing out in her head every night, but now she had a whole observation deck turned into a an XO’s cabin at Shepard’s command. The XO needed a cabin and a desk to do paperwork, and the ability to remove herself from the general quarters to preserve chain of command- what existed of it with the skeleton crew. That was all.

She sat on the cool deck plating, dressed in PT shorts and a SAMC t-shirt. The stars were supposed to be soothing, but she could only see distant planets; home, family, neighbours, replaced by ash. There’d been no word from Sirona or Amateresu. She hadn’t sought it out either, even though Liara had been quietly offering to look for crewmembers’ families.

She decided that she wasn’t getting back to sleep so she might as well get dressed and start on some reports before her shift started in three hours. There was always more to do.

The showers were empty except for her. She ducked her head under the stream, the thunder of the water blocking out all other sound, and scrubbed her skin until it was red-raw. Her routine was familiar; dressing in the black boots, fatigue pants, white shirt and the jacket over it, the bars of her rank at her throat and her name tape on her chest, brushing her hair and doing it up in a bun.

The mess hall was empty too. She was glad; the Marines and sailors new to the  _ Normandy  _ looked at her with a shimmer of awe in their eyes. They saw a Spectre and a special forces hero and a medal-winner, and none of what was underneath.

She wondered if that was how she’d looked at Shepard when she’d first come aboard the  _ Normandy.  _ Those first few days were still a blur; plastering jokes and sarcasm over the empty hole in her, where her Marines had been. She remembered only a few things clearly, like a focused object in an otherwise blurry photograph.

She made herself a strong black cup of coffee and sat down with a volume of Rumi. Relax the mind before she had to deal with the spreadsheets.

She was a couple of poems in when someone sat across from her. She looked up to meet Shepard’s dark eyes. There were deep shadows beneath them, and red light cracked across her jaw. “Can’t sleep?”

“Nah.” She took a long sip of her drink. It used to be easy to talk to Shepard. Now words that were about anything other than work stuck in her throat, like a lump she couldn’t dislodge.

Shepard stirred her tea, not meeting her gaze. Ash wondered if the scars burnt, with their angry red light. “Love poems, huh?”

Ash shrugged, refusing to be embarrassed, “Don't need to read about war or death when it's everywhere.”

Shepard seemed to accept this, “Heard from your family?”

“Just from Sarah.” She said softly, closing her eyes. She used to tell Shepard stories about her sisters and the trouble they got up to, “Her husband is MIA. There hasn’t been any word from Amateresu or Sirona.”

Shepard’s voice was careful, “That doesn’t mean-”

Ashley opened her eyes and her voice was knife-sharp, “I know.” She breathed out, “Sorry. I’m just...You don’t need to worry about it. Mind’s on the mission, 100%. Captain.”

Shepard tapped a finger against her cup, “Never doubted it, Major.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes before the skipper spoke again, “Bekenstein is gone. Allers told me last night; she’s uh, from there, you know.”

Ashley felt a stab of guilt. She’d avoided the reporter pretty handily; she was still finding her feet aboard the ship, without putting her foot in her mouth on record with an ANN reporter. Hadn’t spared a thought for her beyond that of a wry remark to Joker that she was probably helping the Marines’ morale.

“They made binoculars, she said,” Shepard was hunched forward, body posture rigid with keeping her face and voice smooth, “But, uh...wasn’t just binoculars. Udina had me talk to them. Refugee treaty, but, well.”

Udina had gotten her to do what Shepard had always done so well- convince and cajole and coerce.

“You did your job,” Ashley said slowly. Part of her was just shocked Shepard was telling  _ her  _ this when there were people like Garrus and Tali and Joker, people who had never walked away from her. The rest of her just itched to fold her hand over Shepard’s clenched fist. “Listen ... the Reapers were always going to hit Bekenstein. Binoculars or bombs. You gotta know that.”

Shepard met her eyes and, damn it. Damn all the things still caught between them, the shadow of a gun, Horizon, all of it. She went to reach over and take her hand.

“Captain Shepard to the CIC,” EDI’s dulcet tones broke through the bubble. Ashley let her hand fall to the table.

“Meeting at 0930,” Shepard said, standing.

“I’ll be there, ma’am.”

A pause, “Good talk, Williams.”

They smiled at each other for a moment, and then Shepard was gone. Ashley took both of their cups to the sink and poured Shepard’s unfinished tea down the sink as the first few sailors started emerging from the crew quarters, yawning and rubbing their eyes. 

 

It became somewhat of a habit. They shared tea and coffee well before anyone but the night shift were awake, in between missions and firefights, little moments stolen from the war. Sometimes they barely spoke, other time they worked on the paperwork that fuelled the military apparatus, sometimes they traded stories. Shepard (“I was Junior then, to the crew.”) wreaking havoc in slate-grey, Alliance-branded corridors, setting holographic mice on the mess sergeant (“He nearly cried.”). Ashley getting thrown in the Constant city drunk tank (“I was just the babysitter, I swear.” “I’ve seen you with the pitorro _ ,  _ Ash.”) with Sergeant Penny Neal, who had proceeded to serenade the police officers. Loudly, and very badly.

“She sounds like fun,” Shepard said at 3am.

“She was.” It still hurt, but time had blunted the pain and guilt into an ache, and she found she could smile, affectionately, through it. “Pain in my ass though.”

Ashley and Shepard, they didn’t have what they used to have, but they had something, old ease and understanding tempered with a new appreciation. And Ash was good with that. They were different people now, after all.

  
  


She read about Amaterasu in one of the many reports that come flooding into the  _ Normandy,  _ reports she and Traynor had taken to reading, filtering, so Shepard was only deluged by emails she actually had to read.

Her hand clenched the datapad.  _ It is likely the enemy reasoned that the combination of military installations and low population made the colony unsuitable for occupation. _

The datapad frame creaked under her hands.

_ Seventh Fleet assets were forced to retreat before evacuation was complete. _

She forced a breath in, then out. She moved onto the next report. Traynor, across from her, kept reading. The rest of the shift passed in a hazy blur, as if her body had been shifted to autopilot.

  
  


Shepard found Ashley sitting on the lounge, in a white singlet and her fatigue pants, staring out at the stars, wondering if they were still out there somewhere with their hearts beating, feeling the arrow tattooed on her ribs like a brand. Were she and Sarah the only ones left? The I and the IV?

Her captain lingered in the doorway for a moment before she carefully levered herself down to sit next to her. “I heard. I’m sorry.”

Ash tapped the button that closed the shutters and felt Shepard relax, just a little, beside her. “I used to get pissed off, you know? I’d go home and everything was the same. All the shit we went through, and people were still fighting about what colour curtains to get or whose turn it was to take out the trash.” She sighed, let her head hit the back of the couch, “I should’ve told Ma to leave Amaterasu.”

“And go where?” Shepard asked, gently. “Nowhere’s safe, Ash. You know that.”

“What the fuck is going to be left, at the end of this?”

Emilia didn’t say anything. What was there to say? She gingerly, carefully, wrapped an arm around Ash’s shoulders. And Ash let herself move into her, let her head fall onto her shoulder, breathing her in.


End file.
